If you are like many other entrepreneurs, you probably push yourself further and further in your work without checking to see how you’re doing. Because of the endless pursuit of success, you may not realize at a specific moment when you’ve found a career that makes you truly happy. But it’s important to take the time to evaluate how your work is working for you.
When you frequently take note of your wellbeing in your career path and adjust as needed, at some point, you will begin to notice that your work is giving you a real and lasting sense of purpose. These are five signs you are doing the job truly meant for you.
1) Work Energizes You
At some point, you, like nearly every working person, probably felt the drudgery of waking up for a job sapping all your energy. When this happens, the idea of heading to work makes you wish for a vacation – even if you just had one. Your lackluster and purposeless job exhausts you that much.
One of the easiest ways to know you’ve found real purpose in your entrepreneurial work is to see if the exhaustion is gone. If you have more energy, even though you may be working harder than ever before, you are in the right place.
Constantly exhausting jobs aren’t sustainable. You have to have energy to feel motivated at work. When you feel a sense of purpose in your career, you are likely to stay in that career path for a long time. This, of course, means you can look forward to extra high energy levels for the foreseeable future.
2) You Find New Challenges Exciting
When you do the work you love, the idea of tackling a new challenge can be exhilarating. Each new obstacle feels like a fun new puzzle to solve. Instead of causing anxiety and sleepless nights, these kinds of challenges make you feel motivated to keep pushing forward.
Working toward a purposeful career takes constant growth. People truly invested in that purpose understand that obstacles push them to improve, thus helping them achieve their goals. When you recognize this, you start looking forward to those challenges so you can improve yourself.
3) You Enjoy Talking About Work
Do you catch yourself getting animated as you tell a friend or family member about your new project? If so, you might feel passionate about your job. You probably have found a career that brings purpose to your life.
People in jobs that aren’t meaningful prefer to leave work behind when they go home or take a holiday. People passionate about their work, on the other hand, look forward to sharing what they do with other people. Such people enjoy discussing the things that make them feel excited.
Talking other people’s ears off about your work might not be the way to go, but you can tell you’re doing work that’s right for you when you feel tempted to share your work stories with everyone you know.
4) You Feel a Sense of Community
Doing work, you are passionate about often leads to working with like-minded and similarly passionate people. This quickly leads to a sense of community with the people at work.
Being part of a community is good for both mental and physical health. According to Harvard Medical School, social connections can strengthen immune systems, improve insulin regulation, and aid healthy gut function. When the people you work with become friends, your overall health improves too.
The longer you do work you care about, the more like-minded people you meet. This means you won’t have to spend as much time seeking out community; community will come to you.
5) Success Is Genuinely Important to You
The biggest indicator you are on a career path that will give you a sense of purpose for years to come is you have a real and vested interest in the success of your projects. If you find yourself consistently putting in your best work and trying to learn from every experience, you probably are in the right place.
Too many people find themselves working on projects that do not matter to them. They do not care about the outcome. They simply work on these projects because they have to. It is unfulfilling and discouraging, and it typically produces low quality work. It’s bad for everyone.
Entrepreneurs are in an excellent position to ensure they work on projects meaningful to them. They have a large amount of control over the work they choose, and it is highly important they choose projects that make them feel motivated. Then, investing time and effort won’t feel like a burden or waste of time.
This is good news for people looking for meaningful and purposeful work. Entrepreneurship can help them find that.